


The Light

by samsom



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:22:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25920526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samsom/pseuds/samsom
Summary: Post You're Welcome.  Years later, and I needed to right a wrong.
Relationships: Friendship - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	The Light

~~

There was the dark that swallowed the light.

_“Mom! Please!”_

And then there was the light that broke through the dark.

_“Phantom Dennis, put that back.”_

He wasn’t real like he was before, not like her, not like the others, except the one that _was_ Other. 

But she made him _feel_ like he was real. 

She spoke to him, she cajoled him, she asked him for things, and she demanded a lot. As if he was still real. 

She slept and bathed and ate and made so many messes. 

She was real, and while she was there, he was real too. 

And then something happened.

He didn’t know what because the others never came around, but he knew something happened like he knew when the light dimmed. 

He waited. He cleaned like he always did, but there were no more messes, so he was just cleaning what was already spotless. He turned the TV on and off and concentrated on making all the lights turn off and on. 

The neighbors saw. Some of them saw so much they moved. But she never saw him. 

So he tried to make her hear him. Slammed doors and shattered dishes. He waited then, sure she’d burst in at any second and start yelling at him. 

But she never heard him. 

And then the others did come, the two men and the new girl who talked too much, trying to fill the silence. They didn’t bring her back though. 

Instead, they cleaned and packed her things, and he withdrew into the corners seeing that. 

Deep into the dark corners so he wouldn’t see them packing up her clothes and her towels and her damn _loofah_. 

They packed until there were only boxes left, and others came after that and took the boxes, and then her furniture and –

They left. 

They left him in her dark apartment and he understood then that the end had come somehow, without his really being aware of _when_. The center had disintegrated, and they all scattered like dust. 

Except him. 

He went back into the space she freed him from and became something else. 

When keys rattled and the door swung open to new voices, voices that was never hers, he woke up and shooed them all away again. This was her apartment, it was _rent controlled_ , and it was hers. 

So he’d keep it for her. _That_ would be his purpose. 

Dark and waiting, he’d keep it for her and he’d make sure no one else would want it. 

He got good at that. Got so good he forgot who he was when she was there, and sometimes when the shadows overtook the apartment and the streets outside were quiet, he could admit that he nearly forgot _her_. 

But still he waited, even when he forgot why. He waited.

He became the rattle of the floors and the slam of the doors and the water turning off and on and the ceiling fans spinning when there hadn’t been any power to the apartment for months. 

He damn near _emptied_ that building.

And then one night when he was in that corner like an unfinished outline against the wall, eyes sunk in an invisible face - 

A glow started by the window where she liked to watch Silverlake at night. It shimmered from a small ball outward, until the light filled the living room. He woke up raging, ready to drive off another trespasser, ready to – 

And like the sun breaking over the San Gabriel Mountains, she appeared. 

Standing by the window facing the city lights. Her hair was different, longer and full of soft curls, but he knew those shoulders. Knew her essence. 

The doors stopped swinging and the fans stopped spinning and he stopped too. 

Stopped everything.

She turned, smiling at him, and if he had any breath left, he would have drawn it sharply in at the sight of her, the glow that seemed to come from inside of her. 

She wasn’t like them anymore, her friends, but she wasn’t like him either. She was More. 

“Hi Phantom Dennis. Miss me?” 

Even her smile was like the sun breaking, and that small shadow he was bathed in its warmth. When she held her hand out, he took it, thrilled to feel the warmth of her as it threaded through him like a gossamer weave, until he was glowing like she was. 

“Come on, Dennis, we’ve got work to do.”

~end~


End file.
